Excerpts: Mining

Excerpts from the book

Luck

“I WANT TO WIN THAT CAR as a sign of hope that someday I’ll get better.”

Paula prayed to God to let her win a car, as a sign of hope. Later that day, when the announcer called the winning name, Paula felt like the luckiest woman in the world when she accepted the keys to her brand new car.

Three days later, Paula sat in her therapy group sharing her “luck” with her group members, and suddenly remembered her prayer. It had been a plea for a reason to continue living. Paula’s therapist sat on the floor and beamed, “The universe sure loves you.”

For Paula, something shifted inside at that moment. “Could it possibly be,” she thought, “that I really do count, and that I’m being cared for and watched over? That there is a reason for me to go on?”

A powerful seed of hope was planted in that moment, on a landscape of hopelessness.

The Miners see luck as unpredictable events that create good fortune. Though they see the events as unpredictable, they don’t see them as random.

One of The Miners quoted Albert Einstein as saying that the most important question is, “Is the universe friendly?” Consistently among all of The Miners is the belief that they are being watched over by some benevolent force. They believe, then, that the universe is not random. Their perspective on luck nurtures the resiliency that life requires.

Relationships

ALL OF THE MINERS BELIEVE that relationships have been their greatest teachers.

“You can’t hide in relationships-things come up,” said Joan, a social worker Miner. “We often find ourselves behaving in ways that surprise us.”

Another Miner said, “Relationships are mirrors. They reflect back to us parts of ourselves that we are not consciously aware of. How we react to others can give us unexpected information about how we see ourselves and the world underneath the social mask we wear. They provide a catalyst for looking inside our own skin.”

To use relationship as a vehicle to create resiliency, you have to be able to look within yourself when things come up, rather than projecting blame onto others. The Miners all had developed this ability, so their relationships provided them with infinite opportunities to explore and clean out their inner spaces.

Postscript for Readers

WE LIVE IN A WORLD that focuses on the external…material things, power, esteem from others, and, of course, money, money, money.

Many people don’t even think in terms of an inner world…..feelings, beliefs, values. The intention of this book is to invite the concept that the inner world is where the true wealth resides.

Each of the Miners knew this and developed a lifestyle of focusing on the inside world. Each of the resources can provide a starting point for this work of internal excavation. The diamonds are found within.